The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume" something
that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is true, then something else
"should" be happening. But it's not.
Hence, the paradox.
Same thing with the cellphone (distracted-driving) paradox.
Where are all the accidents?
They don't seem to exist.
At least not in the United States.
Not by the federal government's own accident figures.
1. Current Census, Transportation: Motor Vehicle Accidents and Fatalities
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html
2. Motor Vehicle Accidents—Number and Deaths: 1990 to 2009
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf
3. Motor Vehicle Crash Deaths in Metropolitan Areas — United States, 2009
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6128a2.htm
If you have more complete government tables for "accidents" (not deaths,
but "ACCIDENTS"), please post them since the accidents don't seem to exist
but, if cellphone distracted driving is hazardous (which I would think it
is), then they must be there, somewhere, hidden in the data.
Such is the cellphone paradox.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 06:10:23 +0000 (UTC), ceg
<http://www.distraction.gov/stats-research-laws/research.html <https://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cause-of-accident/cell-phone/cell-phone-statistics.html
"1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused
by texting and driving."
etc...

Jeff, we know each other for years over the net, and I know you to be a
very data-based person.
Here's the paradox.
1. You and I believe that distracted driving can easily cause accidents.
2. Cellphone ownership has gone explosively up in the USA.
3. But, accidents have not.
That's the paradox.
A. We can *assume* that driving while using cellphones has gone up.
B. We can also *assume* that distracted driving is dangerous.
C. Unfortunately, distracted driving statistics are atrociously
inaccurate.
Yet, the paradox remains because actual accident statistics are
*extremely reliable*.
So, we really have two extremely reliable components of the paradox.
a. Cellphone ownership has been going explosively up in the USA,
b. All the while *accidents* have been going down.
Hence, the paradox.
Where are all the accidents?

Not if the vast majority of cell phoen users have sense enough not to
text and drive. Then the remainder will have accidents some of the
time while texting and accident rates will go up a little because of
that. But the difference between this and dui accidents versus other
accidents is that many accidents are just accidents and harder to
prevent. But people can decide in advance not to drink and drive, or
text and drive, or talk on the phone and drive, so those acts merit
extra attention, extra prevention, and extra punishment, whether they
cause an accident or not. .

How do you know C? And what difference does it make. Sometimes we
must act based on assumptions.

Why is that a paradox?

I'm not sure that's true. Deaths were about 50,000 a year for a long
time, but the institution of seat belts, padded dash, dual brakes,
crumple zones, shoulder harnesses, airbags, lower speed limit** and some
things I forget lowered the number to 35,000 a year even as the number
of people driving increased with the increase in population and the
number of miles increased at least that much.
What are the fatalities now? You're concerned about accidents, but
accidents increase and decrrease as fatalities do, even if the
correlation is not 1. And fatalities are more important than
accidents, especially 100 dolllar dents,
**which I'm pretty much opposed to, especially since it was done by the
feds, the reason was the oil crisis, and the shortage of oil is over.

There have been studies that show just talking on a cell phone
is almost as bad as texting, which is why it's illegal here now.
I know when I'm on the cell phone I'm partially distracted and
can sense it.
But the difference between this and dui accidents versus other

We know C because there are plenty of accidents, probably the
majority, where the person is not going to admit to being
distracted, what they were really doing, for obvious reasons.

Actually highway deaths have been on the decline going back
to the 50s.

First off, we're not talking fatalities.
We're talking accidents.
And, while I agree that accidents have been going down for a long time
(due to a host of unrelated factors) fatalities are affected by an even
larger host of unrelated factors. (In fact, cellphone use can make
fatalities fewer in quite a few ways but I don't want to go there.)
It's complex enough just to stick with accidents, which are going down,
let alone fatalities (which are also going down).
The simple fact is:
1. We believe cellphone use is distracting, and,
2. We believe distractions cause accidents, yet,
3. We can't find those accidents anywhere.
That's the paradox.
Where are they?

It's not a "paradox." And why do you say that accidents caused by
cell phone use can't be found? The are plenty in the news.
Besides, unsurprisingly, they are under reported.
http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-cell-phone-crash-data.aspx

crash-data.aspx
You're a smart guy.
Think about what you just said.
Then, compare what you said to the reliable accident-rate figures in the
USA, compiled for decades.
What you just said was that you agree that somehow, magically, all the
accidents that are caused by cellphone use aren't reported in the total
statistics, all teh while being reporting in your specific statistics.
In fact, you state, they're underreported, in the individual statistics,
all the while being wholly absent in the total statistics.
So, what you said, just reaffirms the paradox.
You just don't realize it yet.
REQUEST: Someone please explain the paradox to Vic Smith, whom I know to
be a good thinker, as he just reaffirmed the paradox without even knowing
that he did so.

Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are
reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals.
The numbers are high enough, and consistent enough, to make the error
only a very small percentage.
You won't get *better* data that the census bureau data on accidents in
the USA by state - and none are showing what we'd expect.
Hence the paradox.
Where are the accidents?

Most people lie on accident reports to avoid potential complications
with insurance payments. For example, few will admit that it was
their fault when the traffic policeman is standing there just waiting
for a confession and to deliver an expensive ticket.
Anecdote time. While going to medical skool, a doctor friend worked
in the coroners office of a large city. Like all large cities, the
coroners office had a steady stream of deadbeats, bums, winos, and
homeless that arrived without the benefit of medical attention and
records. Not wanting to spend the money on an autopsy and a medical
examiner, they quietly guessed at the cause of death with fairly good
accuracy. However, after a few embarrassing mistakes, that was deemed
unacceptable. Causes unknown were also not a viable option. So, they
inscribed "heart failure" on all such cases, which was certainly true,
but not necessarily the cause of death. That actually worked well for
a few years, until someone ran statistics on what appeared to be a
heart disease epidemic centered in this large city. The city now
requires either an attending physician report or a mandatory autopsy.
While I'm not in a position to prove or demonstrate this, I think
you'll find that such "accident" reports are highly opinionated, are
skewed in the direction of smallest settlements, and are rarely
corrected.

Right. Big numbers are more accurate.
The theory is that given a sufficiently large number of independent
studies, the errors will be equally distributed on both sides of a
desired result, and therefore cancel. That has worked well for global
warming predictions. Unfortunately, the studies have to be
independent to qualify and does not work at reducing the distribution
in a single study.

OMG! Do you really trust the government to do anything correctly? I
wish I had your confidence and less personal experience. I'll spare
you another anecdote illustrating the problem at the city level.

Ok, think about it. You've just crashed your car into an immovable
object while texting. You're still conscious and on an adrenalin
high. The police are on their way and the last thing you need is for
them to find your smartphone on the floor of the vehicle. So, you
make a phone call to your wife telling her you'll be late for dinner
and by the way, you've decided to buy her a new car. The police walk
up, ask you a few questions, and notice you talking on the cell phone.
If you're cooperative, nothing happens. If you're a total jerk, the
mention the cell phone in their report, and you get nailed for
possibly talking/texting while driving. You're screwed if they
confiscate the phone for forensic analysis or request a call record
from you provider.
In short, the statisics are where they want them. If there's a
political or financial benefit to showing huge numbers of talk/text
driving accidents, they will magically appear. If they thing that
nobody really cares about the numbers, you will have a difficult time
finding them. If the numbers accumulate some academic interest, you
will see the same wrong information repeated endlessly in statistical
surveys and college dissertations. Everyone lies, but that's ok
because nobody listens. Incidentally, 87.3% of all statistics are
fabricated for the occasion.

You've missed the point. All those things you raise may well be true
but they were just as true before there were cell phones. The mix of
truth and lies in accident reports goes on but one key thing continues
and that is that virtually ALL significant accidents, certainly those
society might want to concern itself with, are REPORTED and go into
the statistics of HOW MANY accidents. Yeah, the listed causes might
be lies or honest mistakes but the NUMBERS are reported consistently
year after year after year. And its the NUMBERS of accidents ceg is
talking about as the data set, not the CAUSE that's listed. So we
know that the NUMBER of accidents, rate actually, the normalized
number, has steadily been going down down down.
Yet there are people claiming that a NEW and HORRIBLY DANGEROUS CAUSE
of accidents has been unleashed into the driving world, the Cell
Phone. We can't argue with the fact that over the past two decades
MILIIONS AND MILLLIONS of cell phones wound up in the hands of and
used by drivers, that's just a fact. But if all those cell phones are
REALLY this horribly DANGERIOUS ACCIDENT CAUSING instrument, WHERE ARE
THE ACCIDENTS????

Ok, you're assuming a constant RATE of distracted driving accidents as
in some number of accidents for some number of cell phone users. I
can accept that because there has been no significant technical or
behavior modifications to the instrument that might reduce this rate.
In theory, hands free driving should reduce accidents, but the few
numbers I've seen don't show any change.
I ran into the cell phone as the demonic root of all evil when giving
talks on the connection between cell phone use and cancers of the
brain and CNS. I produced a long term graph of new cases of brain and
CNS cancers versus time:
<

http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/brain-CNS-cancer.jpg
Between 1975 and 2011, cell phone use went up dramatically. If there
were a connection, there should have been a corresponding increase in
brain/CNS cancer incidence. There isn't. Actually, there's a
downward trend caused by the introduction of PET (positron emission
tomography) diagnostics, which provided much earlier diagnosis of new
tumors. That shows up in the peak, where more tumors were found
earlier, and a subsequent drop to normal levels, after the early
diagnosis cases became the norm.
What "ceg" seems to want is a similar graph of automobile accidents
and distracted driving accidents, that can be analyzed in a similar
manner. I've offered several reasons why this data will probably be
inaccurate and possible biased by those doing the collecting. I know
that I can produce such data and graphs, but I'm lazy, it's too much
work, and it's too hot.
Well, maybe a few:
<

http://undistracteddrivingadvocacy.net/linked/f2_fatalities.png
Kinda looks like there's a connection between the number of texts and
the number of fatalities resulting from distracted driving. However,
I couldn't find the source of the chart or the data, so I'm very
suspicious.
Here's one that shows a drop in the fatality rate per mile and cell
phone use. I read the text and I'm not sure what this is suppose to
demonstrate:
<

http://www.bhspi.org/photos/BHPSI_NHTSA_fars1961-081b.gif
Here's an interesting article on juggling the traffic statistics:
<http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-charting-traffic-safety-and-fatality-data
Again, the number of fatalities per mile are dropping but since
there's no proven cause, it could as well be from improved medical
response than from improved vehicle safety technology.
And so on. Most of what I'm finding is little better than the above
garbage.
Also, there's another problem. Distracted driving tends to come from
a self-selected statistical population. The only drivers that are
being asked if they were texting are those involved in an accident.
Unless the accident investigator likes to guess, the driver will
probably be interviewed at the hospital and asked if they were using a
cell phone while driving. The answer is predictably no. It's much
the same with statistics involving bicycle helmets and bicycle
accidents. Those choosing to answer have a vested interest in the
result and will therefore tend to answer that of course they were
wearing a helmet and it must have been lost or stolen at the scene.

I found the source:
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951952/
"Our results suggested that recent and rapid increases in
texting volumes have resulted in thousands of additional
road fatalities yearly in the United States."

I agree with pretty much all you wrote just before this. We simply
don't have the data to sort out the truth. And as a result we have
the paradox. It seems to me too things are true but this is just my
opinion...
1) Cell phone use can be distracting and distractions can cause
accidents.
2) The hysteria of cell phone use is unwarranted. Whatever level of
distraction and accidents result is very little different, in the
totality of actual distractions for all causes, then things were
before cell phones. So more or less, for every cell phone caused
accident there is on less CD changing caused accident. I'm sure it's
not really a 1:1 ratio but it's close enough that the hysteria is
unwarranted.
Beyond that though I think there is a real difference between "using a
cell phone" as in placing or receiving a call and talking AND texting.
Texting simply takes too much mental processing for too long a time to
be safe. And I think some studies point to that difference. I used to
inspect roads and trying to write down on paper, which was similar to
texting, the info I was gathering as I drove down the road was just
way too distracting to be safe. But dictating it into a small
micro-recorder worked just fine and I could keep my eyes on the road
and immediately react if anything popped up. I'd play it back at the
office and make the notes.

In keeping with Occam's Razer (otherwise known as KISS); this is the
simplest of the six solutions proposed to date that satisfy the solution
to the paradox.
That simples solution to the paradox is simply that the accident rate
is wholly unaffected by cellphone usage.
But everyone wants a more complicated solution, such as the whacko who
proposes (seriously, I think) that the minor errors in the accident
statistics exactly cancel out the stupifyingly huge cellphone ownership
numbers, or the proponents who seriously suggested that drunk driving
enforcement exactly cancelled out the same, for the exact same result.
These solutions, while possible, are so highly improbably compared to
the Occam's Razer solution, that four or five of the six solutions
proposed can pretty much be considered frivolous right off the bat.

Log in

HomeOwnersHub.com is a website for homeowners and building and maintenance pros. It is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.